


Flashcards, Snowstorms and Galaxy Gals

by Caticorn2003



Category: Dear Evan Hansen - Pasek & Paul/Levenson
Genre: F/F, Galaxy Gals, I have no idea how to tag stuff, Riding The Bus, Snowstorms, zolana
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-18
Updated: 2019-01-21
Packaged: 2019-10-12 09:55:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17465309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Caticorn2003/pseuds/Caticorn2003
Summary: Alana and Zoe wait for the bus.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hey! *laughs nervously* This is just some random idea I had while waiting for the bus (and studying French flashcards) and not a whole lot of planning went into it. Hope you enjoy...?

Alana Beck, seventeen, hummed to herself as she wandered down the front steps of her school, headed for the bus stop. A neatly organized backpack, complete with waist belt for good back health, hung from her shoulders; her gloved hands held flashcards, shuffling them absent-mindedly. She glanced down at the next card.

"OK,  _gare._  Train station. Train station? Train station." Alana flipped the card and moved it to the back of the deck. " _Déménager._   _Déménager..._ _déménager...I don't...remember..."_ She flipped the card over. "Oh, to move. Right. That's so obvious. Stupid me." She left the card unflipped at the bottom of the deck, a reminder to herself to come back to it on the second pass through the deck.

She kept walking, keeping one eye on the cards, the other on the sidewalk in front of her school. "What's the next one? Hmm,  _présenter._ _Présenter,_ to present --  _gah!"_ Something a lot more solid than air bumped into her, and the flashcards went flying as Alana staggered and nearly lost her balance.

"I'm so sorry! Oh my God, are you OK?" A freckled nose was inches from her own, blue eyes blinking nervously.

"I'm fine," Alana muttered, ignoring the stinging in her nose as she bent to gather some of her flashcards. It was quite futile; they were standing next to one of the busiest roads in the town, and the wind from the cars lifted the flashcards and carried them yards away from where they had fallen -- some were already darkened and crushed beneath the wheels of cars that zoomed past, while others were doing their best to hitch a ride in somebody else's backpack, and one had somehow made its way all the way across the street to the bus stop on the other side.

"I'm so, so sorry. Here, let me help you with those." The girl knelt on the ground, oblivious to the fresh snow that was darkening the knees of her jeans.

"No, it's all right -- " Alana began, but the girl waved her off and swept a few flashcards together. Alana dashed off after a flashcard that was doing its best to escape across somebody's lawn, and returned, panting, to see the girl reading her flashcards. "Do you mind?"

"Oh. Sorry. Here." She handed the cards to Alana, then bent down again, hunting for more. "What language are you learning, by the way?"

"Oh, er... French."

"Really? That's so cool, oh my God! I've always wanted to learn French, I wish my school offered it, is it a hard language? Everyone says it's really hard. I'm Zoe Murphy, by the way." She grinned at Alana, who stood, stunned, oblivious to the twenty-three flashcards that still waited to be collected.

Zoe tucked a strand of brown hair behind her ear and said nothing as Alana stared, then realized the girl was waiting for her name. "Oh, I'm Alana. Alana Beck." She stuck out her hand, and Zoe gave her a slightly puzzled look but then extended her own hand, and the girls shook.

There seemed nothing more to say, and the bus hadn't arrived yet, so Alana and Zoe stood in tense silence for a few minutes. Alana wanted to go back to her flashcards, but she didn't know if that would be impolite or not, now that Zoe was standing next to her. Should she try to make conversation? She didn't have anything to talk about, except cheesy questions like "What's your favorite class in school?", the sort of questions adults might ask young children whom they didn't know very well, and anything she asked would likely fall flat, and then it would be even more awkward. Except, would it be any more awkward than standing here in this silence? She steeled herself, then asked, "So, what's your favorite class in school?" at exactly the same time as Zoe asked, "When do you reckon the bus is going to get here?"

Alana forced a nervous laugh, but Zoe broke into giggles. "Sorry, you go ahead, what were you saying?"

"No, it's seriously fine. It was nothing, tell me what you were saying." Alana crossed her fingers and prayed that Zoe would agree, and she wouldn't be forced to re-ask her awkward attempt at making conversation.

"When do you think the bus is gonna get here?" Zoe asked.

"There's a schedule. I think there's a bus at 4:45."

Zoe walked over to the schedule and confirmed this, then checked the time on her phone. "Crap. It's only 4:34."

"Ugh..." Alana bounced up and down in her boots. "I wish it would come sooner, I'm getting cold."

"Do you want my hat?" Zoe offered, already tugging the purple tuque off her head.

"I can't do that!" Alana protested. "That's your hat. You'll get cold."

"Whatever. I'm fine."

"No, really. It's fine. Besides, it's not too long until the bus comes anyway."

The moment Zoe put the hat back on her head, Alana regretted her decision, but she couldn't exactly ask for the hat back now that she had already refused it twice. Instead, she stood in shivering silence and gritted her teeth against the cold, which seemed to be increasing by the second, until the bus came. Zoe breathed a sigh of relief and was first up the steps; Alana followed, grateful. The sky had been light when she left the school after her Model UN meeting, but that had been twenty minutes ago and it was rapidly darkening as the sun disappeared below the horizon. She cursed the short December days as she scanned her bus pass and sat down in the first empty pair of seats, pleasantly surprised when Zoe took a seat next to her.

"Oh, that's a lot better." Zoe pulled her hat back off her head and pulled her backpack into her lap, leaning back and sighing. Her backpack was worn, gray and adorned with pins, and one in particular caught Alana's eye: a small circular pin with four stripes in black, gray, white and purple.

"Nice pin," Alana said.

Zoe glanced down. "Which one?"

"The ace one."

"Oh, yeah. Meet Zoe Murphy, your local asexual panromantic unicorn."

"Heh." Alana grinned and turned her own backpack so Zoe could see the rainbow pin attached to one of the side pockets. "Meet...Alana Beck. The one who's just flat-out gay."

"Not a lesbian?" Zoe wrinkled her forehead.

"I like 'gay' better. I just don't see the need to have two different words, you know?" Zoe nodded, and Alana went on. "Like, there aren't two different words for 'bisexual' depending on whether you're a boy or a girl. There aren't two different words for 'straight.' Why have two different words for 'gay'?"

"Yeah, okay, fair." Zoe fiddled with her backpack strap. "That's cool."

Alana leaned her cheek on the heel of her hand and stared out the window into the gathering dusk. Something caught her eye, and she cupped her hands around her eyes to see it better. "Hey, is it snowing?"

"Where? Hey, let me see!" Zoe leaned across Alana, practically pressing her entire body against Alana's to see out the window. Alana tensed -- she wasn't used to human contact other than a firm handshake and maybe the occasional touch on the shoulder. But this wasn't entirely bad. She could maybe get used to this.

"Hey, you're right!" Zoe wiped the fog off the glass. "Coming down pretty hard, too."

Alana slapped her forehead. "Darn it, I'm next on the list for snow shoveling. Maybe I can bribe my brother to trade with me."

"The list?" Zoe looked confused.

"We have a list for who has to do odd household chores," Alana explained. "It rotates from my dad, then my brother, and me. Like, whenever somebody needs to rake the leaves, or shovel the snow, or clean out the gutters, whoever's next on the list has to do it."

Zoe nodded, confusion still showing in her eyes, but brushed it off. "Oh well, it'll be nice to have more than a half inch of snow on the ground for once."

The lights on the bus flickered, and Alana blinked. They flickered once more and went out. Then there was a sudden screech, a shudder, and the bus ground to a halt.


	2. Chapter 2

"Sorry, folks," the driver of the bus called, unbuckling his seatbelt and stomping down the aisle. "Bus broke down. Gonna have to wait for the next one, or find some other way of getting home."

"Excuse me, sir?" Alana called timidly, raising her hand slightly. "How long until the next one?"

The driver cracked his gum. "Next bus comes in a half hour, but it's gonna be pretty full what with it being rush hour on a Friday, and all that. They're sending a replacement one, but that's gonna be 'bout forty-five minutes to an hour."

"Forty-five minutes!" Zoe exclaimed. "No way!"

"Sorry, miss. That's the way it is. You can always get off and take a different bus." The bus driver continued unsympathetically down the aisle to spread the news to the passengers at the back.

Zoe exhaled, sinking down in her seat. "Guess we're stuck here until then."

"You couldn't...call somebody or something?" Alana suggested tentatively.

"My dad has to work for another hour and my asshole of a brother specifically said at breakfast that he was going out on a date, and he needed the car for it. Anyway, he wouldn't pick me up even if he could." Zoe sank so far down in her seat, she was practically kneeling on the floor. "Do you know Connor Murphy? He'd be in your grade."

"Yeah, I think we had English together last year." Alana made a point of always remembering who had been in her classes in what year. "We were doing a presentation on Huckleberry Finn together, and instead of calling him Huck Finn, Connor had the brilliant idea of calling him, well -- "

"Okay, that's fine, you can stop there. I've heard the story before." Zoe's tone was light, but Alana detected a hint of annoyance as Zoe rapidly changed the subject. "What about you? No way of getting home either, I take it, huh?"

Alana shook her head. "Can't think of anything."

"Well --" Zoe sat up properly in her seat. "What should we do?"

An unexplained wave of happiness surged through Alana at the "we." Except for teams and class activities, she'd never been part of a "we" before. She'd convinced herself that she liked it that way, but now she was having second thoughts. "Well, let's talk through the problem. First of all, where even are we?"

A quick search on Zoe's phone revealed that they were still on the main street, 3.2 miles from Zoe's house and 5.6 miles from Alana's. Walking, while doable, wasn't worth it for a distance that long; the next bus would be there faster than they could walk it.

"Second of all." Alana sat forward, happy now that they had a concrete problem to solve. "Are there any places where we could go?"

Zoe chewed her lip. "Not your house, not my house. Library closes at five, and anywhere else would kick us out after a while...oh! My grandma lives pretty close to here!"

"How close is 'pretty close'?"

"Like, two miles. Maybe a little less. But we could walk that, and then we could stay there as long as we needed to and our parents could pick us up whenever."

"I guess." Alana shrugged. "But what's the point of this? We might as well just stay here and wait for our parents, or for the next bus."

"But at my grandma's it'll be warm and comfortable and we'll have food. Are you hungry?"

Alana was about to say she wasn't, but her stomach grumbled, giving her away. "Yeah, I guess so. Okay, sure, let's do this. What are we waiting for?"

"Awesome!" Zoe jumped to her feet and grabbed Alana's hand, pulling her up with her. "Let's go then."

"Don't forget your hat."

"Oh yeah. Thanks." Zoe jammed the purple hat on her head and went up to the bus driver. "Excuse me, sir?"

"Yeah?"

"My friend and I are getting off, if that's okay? We're just walking to my grandma's house, it's not far."

The bus driver looked at the two girls, shrugged, then opened the door for them.

"Thank you!" Zoe called over her shoulder as they stepped down the couple of stairs to the sidewalk.

It was  _really_ snowing, and pitch black. They had been let out next to a streetlamp, and Zoe was bathed in orange light, turning her hat brown and her hair red.

"You look like a pumpkin," Zoe giggled, poking Alana's now-orange coat and backpack.

"Thanks? Which way are we headed?" Alana's head was still buzzing at the word  _friend._ She'd never had a friend. Acquaintances, plenty. Friends? None. Never. Was Zoe her friend? She had called Alana her friend when talking to the bus driver, but that didn't really mean anything because it would have sounded strange to say "My acquaintance and I are getting off, if that's okay." Then again, she was inviting Alana along to her grandmother's house, which acquaintances didn't do -- at least, none of hers ever had.

 "Well, we walk down this street for about half a mile, then turn onto this teeny little street that cuts through to another road, and then we walk along there for some time and..."

Alana was barely paying attention.

"...and anyway, then we're there. Alana, are you listening?"

"Um. Yes?"

"Good. You can lead the way then." Zoe abruptly stopped walking, motioning for Alana to take the lead. She smirked at Alana's bewildered expression. "Don't worry, I'm only kidding. Are you cold? You look cold."

Alana shook her head even as a gust of wind nearly blew her coat off and a massive shiver rippled through her body.

"Yeah, you are. Here." Zoe stuffed her hat onto Alana's head, ignoring her protests. "I'm fine. You don't even have a hood." She gently tugged the hat down over Alana's ears, giving her a playful pat on the head. "There you go."

Alana didn't like to admit it, but she was much warmer now, and that was probably a good thing considering they still had a two-mile walk ahead of them.

The girls made sparse conversation as they headed down Main Street, but with a) the wind, b) the cars and c) the cold, they could barely hear each other and didn't much feel like talking anyway, so the conversation slowly petered out into silence.

After ten minutes of walking, Zoe tugged at Alana's coat sleeve and motioned towards a small street that curved away from the main one. Alana nodded and they turned onto the street. The wind abruptly stopped -- the houses and trees made excellent windbreakers -- and with it, most of the noise.

"Oh, that's better!" Zoe threw off her hood, shook her indigo-streaked hair, and pulled it back up again. "Finally, I can hear myself think again."

Alana wasn't sure what to say to that; she gave a faint smile that Zoe wouldn't see anyway in the dark, and kept walking.

The quiet didn't last for long; it was barely five minutes before they were hit with another large street, not quite as much of a wind tunnel as Main Street, but still with cars and buses and howling winds. Alana shivered in spite of herself, but she didn't want Zoe to give her any more of her clothing and so she gritted her teeth and bore it. The bit of amiable conversation they had been able to make on the smaller street quickly died out, and they lapsed into silence.

It was still getting colder, and the snow certainly wasn't dying down; if anything, there was more of it coming down than ever. Alana wished dearly that they had just stayed on the bus; at least then they would have been warm, and dry, and could have talked to one another without getting drowned out by the wind.

Zoe said something that Alana couldn't hear. Alana turned to her. "What?"

"What?" Zoe shouted back, leaning closer.

"What did you say?" Alana practically screamed.

"I SAID, DO YOU WANT SOME WATER?"

Alana nodded, and Zoe stopped and pulled a plastic water bottle out of her backpack, then motioned to Alana to come and stand behind a tree with her, where they would be moderately sheltered from the wind.

Zoe fiddled with the cap, trying to unscrew it with frozen fingers. She tugged her gloves off, but that didn't make it any better.

"Here." Alana took the bottle from Zoe and unscrewed it with one deft twist.

Zoe smiled ruefully as Alana gulped the icy water. "Sorry, my fingers are frozen solid."

Alana lowered the water bottle, reached out, hesitated -- then took Zoe's frigid hand in hers, rubbing the fingers gently. When Zoe took the water bottle back with her other hand, Alana cupped Zoe's hand in between both of hers, warming it as much as she could when the snow was blowing around them and the temperature was fast approaching the negatives.

Zoe stowed the now-empty water bottle in her backpack with her free hand, then let go of Alana's hand and slung the backpack onto her shoulders. "Let's keep going, shall we?"

Alana nodded. They had just stepped back onto the sidewalk when she felt a hand catch her own in mid-swing, and then she and Zoe were holding hands.

This wasn't something Alana had ever done before.

But she decided that she rather liked it.


	3. Chapter 3

Forty frozen and miserable minutes later, they stumbled down a small street and stopped in front of a tiny blue house with the number  _188_ hand-painted onto the side. The blinds were drawn, and there weren't any lights on.

"Here it is," Zoe mumbled through her scarf.

Alana merely nodded. She didn't even know if she could form words anymore, her lips were so numb.

"Watch out for the ice --" Zoe warned as they made their way up the steep driveway.

The words came too late, and before Alana knew it she was on her butt on the ground for the second time that day. (Was it really the same day? It seemed like years ago that she had stood at the bus stop with Zoe, waiting for the bus to come. And yet, it had only been a couple hours.)

Zoe extended a hand to Alana, who took it gratefully. Zoe pulled just as Alana finally got enough friction under her boots to stand up; the combined forces along with the slick ice were too much, and Alana found herself falling in the opposite direction, with nothing to stop her --

And then she was on the ground, literally nose-to-nose with Zoe Murphy. So close she could feel the other girl's warm breath on her nose, melting the frost that had built up on it during the walk.

Zoe was the first to try to get up, which might have been a mistake, as Alana stayed still and somehow, whether accidentally or on purpose (Alana would never know) their noses moved in opposite directions against each other and then their lips were touching in a frozen kiss.

It was the first time Alana had ever kissed anybody, which, at the age of seventeen, was pretty depressing, but then again, she was  _Alana._ As a result, she had no idea what to expect from kissing, but if this was the sort of thing one could expect, then she could understand why movie characters spent quite so much time doing it. Apparently her lips weren't quite as numb as she had thought.

She could have kept going forever, but Zoe broke the kiss after a few seconds. Alana didn't blame her; lips couldn't warm an entire body after all, and it was still below zero outside, and they were still lying in the snow.

"That was --"

Zoe responded by taking her hand again and giving it a gentle squeeze, and Alana couldn't stop the grin that crept onto her lips as Zoe led her carefully up the front walk and to the door of the house.

"Should we knock?"

"Nah, there's a doorbell." Zoe pointed to the small white button to the left of the door. Alana pushed it, and heard the faint chimes ring out through the house.

About thirty seconds passed, and still nobody was coming to the door to open it. Combined with the lights, this probably meant nobody was at home.

"Are you kidding me?" Alana kicked the door (which, if the doorbell hadn't, certainly would have brought running anybody who lived in the house). "We walked this far, and then nothing? What are we going to do now?"

"Alana, calm down. There's a spare key to the back door somewhere, I just have to remember where it is." Zoe tugged at Alana's hand, leading her around back to the small, snowy backyard. Once there, she stood still, thinking hard.

"Maybe --"

"Shh!"

"Could it --"

_"Shh!"_

Alana shh'd.

Finally, Zoe smacked herself on the forehead. "Of course." She hopped through the snow over to the back door, reached underneath one of the paving stones leading up to it,and lo and behold, there was the key. Both girls breathed a sigh of relief.

For a moment Alana was afraid that the key wouldn't fit, or would be too frozen to unlock the door, but thankfully one thing went right for them that evening, and the door clicked open after several moments of Zoe's fumbling with the key, trying to get it in the lock and turn it with frozen fingers. They stumbled through the door, Zoe switched on the light, and then they were finally inside and warm.

The door was hardly shut when Zoe melted into Alana's arms, kissing her like never before. The kiss on the icy pavement paled in comparison to this;  _this_ was something entirely different. Alana tentatively kissed back, which only caused Zoe to redouble her efforts, winding her arms around Alana's neck as Alana placed one hand on the small of Zoe's back, the other around her waist.

Zoe broke away and looked at Alana, a playful smile on her lips. "You know... all things considered, I'm pretty glad the bus broke down. Aren't you?"

Alana just smiled.

And Zoe leaned forward again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So uh... somehow I was picturing an ending for this in my head, and it didn't turn out nearly the way I'd imagined it. Still, a satisfying enough ending, I guess.
> 
> Okay, I gotta go watch a lunar eclipse, so bye.


End file.
